Empire is tucked away below ground at the London Film Museum’s Bond In Motion exhibition in Covent Garden. Surrounded by Roger Moore’s Lotus Esprit S1, Pierce Brosnan’s BMW 750L and Daniel Craig’s Aston Martin DBS we’re in the right place to receive one of cinema’s less heralded heroes: professional stuntman and action director Vic Armstrong. Politely refusing the canapés on offer, sipping from a glass of water and clad in a suit his secret agent doppelganger would be proud to wear, the man who’s spent his life cheating death turns his attention on us. Empire lines up the crosshairs, clicks play on its Q-approved Dictaphone and delves into the memory banks of one of cinema’s greatest stunt performers...

“It nearly went wrong the first time,” remembers Vic Armstrong of this daredevil swing over shark-infested water. For Bond’s eighth big-screen outing in Live And Let Die, Armstrong stepped up to the plate (or platform). “I had to do a handstand on the end and then swing and jump down,” he explains of his stunt as Roger Moore’s Bond, “but as I landed [the platform] wasn’t welded very well, so it dropped me further and I smashed my heel straight into the ground.” For all Bond’s smooth moves, getting out of life-threatening situations is anything but easy. “Thankfully they had to take it away and re-weld it, so we did it the next day. I literally couldn’t get upstairs, I had to go up with my hands and knees with my feet off the ground, because I had bruised the heels.”

Oh there has to be a second part to this feature surely!!! Vic is a legend and a remarkably modest individual too.
Thanks for all your hard work Mr Armstrong - I have been enjoying your stunts all my cinema going life! More